"Old"

 

As he pushed the sealcoat across the surface of the parking lot, he became aware of an elderly woman watching him from the balcony of her second-floor condo. She was seated close to the railing, her hands folded over the top bar. The skin covering her fingers was dark brown. He imagined that it would look like splintered wood if he saw it up close, and that her fingers were curling over the railing like withered grape vines. He didn't know why it bothered him. He continued the sweep the liquid seal over the cracks in the exhausted asphalt that had been filled, telling himself that the sun was just getting to him.

"When Your Petals Fall Away"

 

[Finally started reading A Game of Thrones not too long ago, and was reading it before making tonight's post. I think it put me in a certain mindset...] 

The girl behind the flower stall, who smelled as sweet as honey and smiled like a summer day, watched the old woman in the brown robe edge through the crowd, basket swinging from her arm like a chain, and head straight for the dark-haired man in velvet, the one the flower girl had thought was walking toward the tulips. "Care for something exotic for your kitchen, good sir?" the woman asked when she was in front of him.

The flower girl watched as the man peered first into the basket and then at the crone, his smile thin, his eyes narrowed in confusion. "Good woman," he said, "forgive me for being so frank, but those are the ugliest old roots I've ever seen."

"Not the first time I've heard that," said the crone, smiling, "but if you'll allow me a second, you'll see that those ugly old outsides hide a lovely inside." While the man looked on, she reached for a root and broke off one of its swollen branches. From behind her baskets, the flower girl saw the color of the root's flesh--a keen yellow, like that of autumn leaves--and caught its peppery scent. "A lovely inside," the woman repeated, "not to mention--absolutely delicious." She angled her smile at the man with a knowing nod. "If I may be so frank."

The man offered a chuckle and a large brass coin in exchange for one of the roots and departed without a second glance at the flower stall. "You must do well at the market with your wares," the flower girl said curtly to the old woman once the man was gone.

The woman turned to her with a smile so toothy that the plainness of it was hard to behold. "I do fair at market, yes," said the crone with a shrug. "But I do better afterward, with the men who want to know what else those ugly old outsides are hiding." She tossed the broken root at the flower girl, who caught it just before it struck her face. "Something to remember later, child, when your petals there all fall away." And with that, the old woman left, calling out to another man, "Care for something exotic, good sir?" while the flower girl cast her eyes downward and studied her roses.

"Less than Nothing"

 

It was another morning in the hospital, and thoughts were coming and going through April's mind like insects flitting around a leaf, or nervous little birds hopping along branches. Some she understood why she had them. Like the one about the day she learned about mass versus weight in one of her early science classes. She could see the old memory play on a screen somewhere inside her head, see the pug-nosed boy sitting next to her--was his name Roger? or maybe Greg?--punch her arm and declare for all the students to hear that there was no difference between mass and weight when it came to April; she had a lot of both. And then she could follow the thought back around and recall what had brought it to mind in the first place. In this case, it was because she had glanced at her wrist. It was so thin now that her plastic ID bracelet, fastened on the last hole as it was, kept sliding down onto her hand.

Moments like those were becoming rarer, April could tell. Most of her thoughts arrived and left without giving any indication why they came. There were holes in her memory that she wished she could avoid. Inevitably, needing to know why her mind had chosen to drift this way or that, she would go a few steps backward along the path that her thoughts had taken and stumble. It was almost too much. At times, when she was aware that something was missing but couldn't say what, she imagined herself losing her mind at the same rate she was losing fat tissue and bone mass, imagined the subtraction of her memories from the world occurring alongside the depletion of substance from her body. In those moments, she saw herself at the end shrinking and shriveling beneath her blankets until she weighed nothing and then, as her last thought dissipated, shrinking even further until she weighed less than nothing, becoming a tiny disruption in the air, a bit of negative space that tugged at the people who passed the hospital bed and made them pause for a second, wondering if there was anything there that should have mattered.

An image of a bird flickered across the television screen. It sang its song and darted away, the camera following its flight. April had known once what kind of bird it was by that song. She would have sworn on it.

"The Muffin Man"

 

[According to Wikipedia, there really isn't much to the lyrics of "The Muffin Man."]

When I pulled up in Janelle's driveway, I saw that she was sitting on the step leading up to her front door. She was frowning and had her chin resting on her hands; she was sitting like a little girl who had gone outside to nurse a broken heart. Because she had invited me over for margaritas, this confused me.

"Hey," she said after I had gotten out of the car. "You know the Muffin Man?"

"Yeah, why? What's up?" I really didn't know him any better than Janelle did, but I had seen him walking through the neighborhood enough times, taking on that big, doughy middle of his through daily bouts of exercise, that I knew who she was talking about.

"He died," Janelle told me. "I saw his picture in the obituaries today."

"Oh," I said. I didn't know what else to say after that. I didn't know anything else about him, except that I thought he lived on Drury Lane--I saw him go into a house there once. So I told her that.

She looked at me and nodded. "His name was James Obryzewski. Fifty-three years old, no kids, volunteered twice a week at Prairie Food Bank," she said. "Listen, I think I want to take a walk." She placed her hands on her knees and stood, wearily, no longer looking young with her heart in pieces but older, the age she truly was, with her heart showing all the little cracks that come with living and never fully heal. "You want to come with? Or maybe we can go later, I don't know."

"No, now's good," I said, "margaritas can wait."  Janelle took me by the arm and smiled. It was a simple thing, what I said to her, but I had the feeling that to her, like a child's nursery rhyme, it meant so much more.

"It All Ends Up the Same"

 

The old ones say, "You're young and green; you have nothing to worry about."

The young ones say, "Nothing can hurt you, with your thick, weathered skin."

It turns out that a knife cuts all of them equally well.

"Obey All Posted Signs"

 

I stopped the car at the intersection--badly, I know; I felt the seatbelt catch like air in the throat of someone choking--and I looked at my dad, calm in the passenger seat. Again he pointed out the window at the arrow.

"That doesn't look like a real sign," I told him.

He gave a half-smile and let his breath escape slowly, through his nose, a teacher trying to be patient with a bumbling student. "Part of learning how to drive is learning what to look for," he said. "See if this helps." He made a few gestures with his right hand, signs that I had never seen before, and suddenly I saw. I saw everything. Now the air really was caught in my throat. I looked him in the eyes once more, and he nodded. "Same as before, press the gas pedal down, slowly, slowly...." The car's nose lifted, we lurched into the sky in the direction of the arrow, and more than ever before, I felt the enormous weight of moving forward.

"Growing Pains"

"I swear, all I did was try to stretch my neck muscles!" the woman said as she accepted the bottle of painkillers with one hand, the heating pad with the other.

Her husband shook his head. "See, that's where you went wrong," he informed her. "You tried to stretch all willy-nilly, like a thirty-three year old. You're thirty-four now, wild child! Time to start acting your age."

The woman popped one of the pills, wishing the ibuprofen could make all of the pain go away.



"Cloud Storage"

 

At night, no matter how hot it had been during the day and how much of that heat lay trapped on the tar-black shingles, she would climb from her bedroom window onto the garage roof and lie there, listening to bands play at the outdoor theater. The sound would echo like rain in a tin cup as it traveled the few miles from the theater to where she lay, but she didn't mind. Sometimes while listening she saw a contrail form in the sky overhead. She imagined that the people inside the tiny planes could hear the concerts as well. She told herself that they would carry the songs they heard with them wherever they were going. It was the kind of thought, on nights like that, that almost made it okay to grow up.

"Possibilities"

 

The night before she was scheduled to perform what was probably her twentieth gastric resection, Dr. Bennett dropped three eggs. She had intended to boil an egg for her dinner, but each time she removed one from the package, it slipped free of her fingers, as if it were perfectly natural for that to happen whenever someone took an egg from the fridge. She studied the hands she saw cleaning the yolk from the tiles and tried to imagine that they belonged to someone else.

Mr. Hart's gastric resection went fine. After the procedure, however, Dr. Bennett took her lunch at a nearby park. There she watched an elderly woman in mismatched clothes throw bread crusts to the ducks. She wished she could catch a better glimpse of the old woman's hands. She wondered if the woman was happy, feeding the ducks like that, but knew it was better not to ask.

"To Go"

 

Harriet was putting away the dishes when, suddenly, her teenage daughter, Elena, appeared next to her, holding a box.

"Oh, hi, hon," Harriet said, closing the cabinet door. "I didn't even hear you come in. Did you have a good night out?"

Elena looked as if she had just seen a car crash. She stared ahead for a few seconds before her eyes shifted toward Harriet. "Night?" she asked quietly. "How long have I been gone?"

Harriet crossed her arms in front of her chest. "Well, Chris came to pick you up around six, so, yeah. That long. You okay?"

"You still remember who I am? Quick: which bedroom is mine?"

"Second one on the right, the one painted green like you've had it for the last three years. Ellie, you're scaring me."

With one hasty leap of a step Elena stumbled into Harriet and, still holding the box, wrapped her arms around her. "I love you, Mom," she said. "I'm sorry for scaring you."

"Please don't let this be drugs," Harriet whispered into Elena's shoulder.

"What?"

"I said," said Harriet, stepping back, "I miss you giving me hugs." She nodded at the plain white box. "What do you got there? Leftovers?"

Elena glanced down as if the box had just appeared in her hands, the way she had appeared in the kitchen moments before. "Oh," she said. "Yeah, I guess. In a way. Just something from where we went." With a resolute nod, she smiled and held the box outward. "I want you to have it, Mom."

"Oh, honey, we just ate dinner not too long ago."

"No, not like that," Elena said. "Just--whenever you need something different." She passed the box to Harriet, who raised an eyebrow and placed it on the counter. Elena smiled at her again. "I'm going to go take a shower," she said.

"Just let me know if you need anything," Harriet said. She watched Elena climb the stairs. She knew she wouldn't have many more chances to watch where Elena went. The box on the counter was small and simple and begging for Harriet to open it. So she did. And her eyes went wide. She could barely begin to imagine how far her daughter had gone.

"In Need of a Dragon"

 

Not two minutes after Ms. Wright had finished speaking with the owner of the appliance store and hung up her phone did her doorbell ring. It was not the delivery person ringing but instead a dragon, ten feet tall and shimmering in its blue scales, its neck bent low under the porch roof and its wings folded like fans. It wore a grey fedora.

"Hello," it said. "Pardon me for intruding, but I got wind of your neighbors' chatter and heard your furnace is on its way out. Might you be in need of a dragon?"

Ms. Wright, of 142 Oak Terrance #3, merely stood there.

"My card," said the dragon. It pinched a thin card between two knife-sharp claws and passed it toward Ms. Wright, who opened her screen door just wide enough for her hand to fit. The dragon, in addition to being a home heating specialist, was also a supply logistics manager. Its name was an illegible scroll.

"I just ordered a new furnace yesterday," Ms. Wright whispered, barely able to meet her visitor's gaze.

The dragon clicked its tongue. A curl of smoke escaped from between its jagged mountainpeak teeth. "I'm always just a little too late on these house calls," it said with a sigh. "I was on my way over much earlier in the week, but I caught the scent of the earth turning over far below the grass, because, as you know, spring starts next week, and the smell was just so...."

The dragon sighed again and shook its head. 

"Forgive me. I'm easily distracted in my old age," it said. "If I may ask, the warranty on your purchase...?"

"Ten years," said Ms. Wright.

"Well, that's good, that's quite standard. I'd like to point out, however, that dragons are rather long-lived, and incredibly efficient to boot, the source of our flames being nothing more than a slight twist in our anatomy."

"Of course, of course." Ms. Wright's eyes had not grown any less saucer-shaped since she answered the door.

"And," the dragon added, removing his fedora, "we've also been known to make excellent companions on rare occasions, particularly for those among your kind who--and please consider this a term of respect, as you'll imagine it must be for my ilk--who are more advanced in years." Here Ms. Wright touched her grey curls and finally looked straight at the dragon, who seemed to understand her in a way no other salesperson ever had. "While I understand you have a commitment with another seller and have no wish to pressure you out of it," the dragon said, "I do hope that, once your warranty's over, you'll keep me in mind. For as I suspect you may know, there are some chills that come with age that won't go away no matter how high you set your heater."

The dragon cleared its throat and blinked, and then smiled before placing its fedora on its head. "Ms. Wright, thank you so much for your time," it said. "I hope you have a wonderful day."

The dragon lifted itself into the air on its mighty wings, stirring the scent of springtime with each beat. Ms. Wright remained at her door, her eyes swimming in tears, her mouth ajar, and her fingers fumbling for her phone as she tried to recall the appliance store's cancellation policy.

"Make Time Stop"

 

In that room is a woman who for decades has been waiting for something to happen to her. Any day now, she once said. But the moment she said it, the clock in that room all of a sudden ceased to work. Dust continues to settle on top of it, the woman's body ages and sags, and still she watches for some movement from the minute hand so that everything that's going to happen will happen already.

I see that door next to me in the mirror; I know what goes on behind it. And I keep it locked, I keep it locked, I keep it locked.

"Cleaning Your Glasses"

 

"You keep cleaning your glasses," the child said to her grandmother one day when they were sitting together.

"Because I can't seem to see right with them on," the grandmother replied, though she could see well enough to understand what the girl thought of that. It isn't that I can't that accept my eyes are failing, she wanted to tell her. It's that I can't accept that this is as good as it gets.

"I guess I can see all I need to, though," the grandmother said instead, putting her glasses on and looking away.